For their daughters
the day she saw her niece die. “I was shocked,” she says, “so I quit this job. The women helped me and now I sell wood to schools.”
Ester Oseur buried her ormurunya knife long ago and describes having physically struck “mothers and fathers who wanted to circumcise their daughters. The Women’s Network gives us courage. We are many and we are strong, no one dares attack us.”
Mpoke, who founded the Women’s Network at Elangata Wuas, says: “The Maasai society is male-dominated. Women don’t have a voice and they don’t have property rights. These women have seized their place in the community and carry out excellent work in raising awareness about the effects of FGM. “They get fathers, husbands, and local leaders involved and explain that the only way the entire society will make progress is to send girls to school.”
Julius Rotiken, an influential elder in one of the villages, is one of these “feminist males”. “My uncle did not have his daughters circumcised and I saw how they were healthier and did better at school,” he says. “Unfortunately, there are few men here who see things as I do.”
Lucy Yepe Itore is familiar with the ferocious reprisals of the Maasai men. Vice-principal of the school in Il Bissil, not far from Kajiado, she made room in the dormitories two months ago for 20 girls taken from their families to rescue them from genital mutilation and early marriages.
There isn’t a day that goes by when morans, young Maasai war- riors, don’t arrive at the gate wielding sticks and demanding the return of their young girls. “They threaten me. I had to hire guards,” says Itore, a matronly woman seemingly not afraid of anything, as she bursts out laughing.
Like Mpoke, she receives emergency calls from her “spies” in the camps and leaves on expeditions in the night to save girls.
“In another rescue centre, we accommodated 130 girls,” she says. “Some of them have since become nurses, one works for an international NGO and travels around the world. I am convinced that by allowing girls to study and further their education, we’ll be able to turn around not only their destinies but our people’s destiny as well.”
Sukuta is nine years old, the youngest girl at the rescue centre in Il Bissil. She has a bright, sweet face and her eyes burst with curiosity.
She looks vastly different from when she first arrived, traumatised and in terrible pain. She had been married for three months to a man as old as her grandfather, who had bought her innocence with a dowry of five cows.
“I would like to meet her parents and try for reconciliation,” says Itore. “But they haven’t answered. Many parents, once their daughters have settled here, say: ‘That’s it, she is no longer my daughter.’ Very sad stories.”
Irene is only 13 but she’s already a mother. Itore’s sentinels found her segregated at home. “All she was asking for was to continue going to school. Her grandmother is now taking care of her child.” Irene wants to talk about herself, but tears, weighty and paralysing, flow over her words.
Soila, also just 13 years old, ran away from two marriages and she sings us a song: “I sang it softly to myself to give me the strength to get through the worst times.”
To cover the education costs of the 20 fugitives — the number may have doubled since we spoke — Itore organises long-distance adoption through ActionAid. “All they own is their shuka, the Maasai blanket they were wearing when we saved them. They need everything.”
In the schoolyard, watching the girls play with the water gushing out of the well while singing in a round dance and laughing loudly in their pink school uniforms, you can’t help but think they have already won the battle against the cruel legacy that tried to rip their childhood to shreds.